Saw a play this week, a reading, in its early stages. It had some great characters, and some great scenes, and was doing some things that were highly theatrical.

The problem? The play was still at the stage where the author was throwing in everything but the kitchen sink...the only "rule" seemed to be that she would do whatever she wanted. The result? It was very, very difficult to tell what "world" the play was trying to make. There wasn't a logic to what was happening, so we didn't really know where to look. A character floated up toward the ceiling in one scene, but it never happened again. A character was a puppet...but why only one? And to what end? Characters would establish themselves as existing within a particular "world" and having particular concerns, and then would show up, willy-nilly, in another world with different concerns. It felt like the play's "signals" were going in every direction at once.

So now, of course, I sit down to work on this adaptation...and face a similar problem. We are combining some disparate and gorgeous elements (bicycles, a classic musical, saturated color, a war story, time-bending and a funky time structure)...but how do we do it so that those things feel organic, feel NECESSARY to this story? How, especially, do we handle the liberties we're taking with time in such a way that they feel earned, that they have their own logic...so that even if the audience can't explain it, they can go along with it? So that it doesn't get in the way of the storytelling?

We shall see.